‘Will you let me tell you about the first man who loved me?’ Maria’s question seemed directed to the statue. Haraldr touched her hand for a moment and let it go, then allowed her the silence to continue. ‘I was very young. Not even a woman. It was a time of great turmoil in the palace. The Emperor Constantine, who had been a very old man when he had inherited the Autocrator’s diadem from Basil the Bulgar-Slayer, acutely sensed his mortality. If he was to perpetuate the Macedonian dynasty, he knew he had to find a son-in-law for one of his purple-born daughters. Romanus was Prefect of the City, apparently of some ability at that level of government, although he was utterly incompetent as an Emperor. But he had the majestic speech and stature expected of an Emperor, and for a man – may the Theotokos forgive me – for a man as shallow as Constantine, that was enough. He became fixed on this man as his successor, even though Romanus was already married to a decent lady. That was no matter; the wife was forced to retire into a convent, the divorce granted, and Romanus was offered up to Theodora. She had the courage to refuse her father and has been punished for her denial ever since. Zoe could never resist her father, and ever since has paid the wages of her acceptance. But that is another tale. The object of this prelude is to say that the two women I had always relied upon for love and guidance were suddenly undone by this fate, their lives swept away for ever. And so I, who had always feared abandonment, was at last alone.’ Maria paused and worked at her lip with her pearl-white teeth. ‘A man came to me during this time, a man old enough to be my father, and at first he was my father. He was the father I had always dreamed of, a man of military accomplishments who had risen to high civil authority in the Senate, his hair still dark with youth, his hard blue eyes gleaming with knowledge.’
Haraldr looked at Maria’s elegant profile and realized that she still loved this man.
‘He bought me books of romances with the most beautiful illuminations, talked to me of Iberia or Alexandria or anywhere I dreamed of going, told me wonderful secrets about the lofty dignitaries who surrounded me.’ Maria’s lashes fluttered, as if she were viewing some beauty too dazzling for vision. ‘Shortly after Constantine died and circumstances made both Zoe and Theodora even more distant from me, I began to become a woman. My menses had begun to flow, my innocent breasts were now tender and swollen. Drunk with the wine of that first womanhood, I began to seek the love between men and women. And of course I fixed upon the most immediate object of desire. I embarrassed us both at first, and yet I almost immediately sensed a power I had of course never known I possessed, even though I had always been thought a beautiful child. It was gradual, as delicate as the rain that slowly wells out of a mist, but our relationship became no longer that of father and daughter but of. . .’ Maria stroked her silk-sheathed knees. ‘We became like husband and wife.’
Maria stood, her arms folded under her breasts, and studied the grass as she trampled it in short, somewhat pawing steps. ‘I honestly do not remember much of what that love was like. It seems so long ago. I only remember a kind of silver nimbus around it, an innocence that seems incredible to me now. But we held each other and made love like husband and wife, so I thought, and I believed that we had indeed pledged a troth. I begged him to marry me before this sin profaned my soul. He kept deferring, disclaiming about my age.’ The blue flames of Maria’s irises began to glow. ‘Apparently I was old enough for his arms to wrap my naked loins but not old enough for a wedding belt to girdle my waist. But in my innocence I waited. And then one day I learned the reason for my waiting. I remember that like yesterday. A slut who hovered about the court, waiting for whatever dignity might fancy to dip into her, came skipping to my apartments where I was learning Homer, as a girl my age is bound to do. She announced as gaily as her own betrothal the engagement of my lover to Anna Ducas, an arrogant Dhynatoi bitch who had already inflamed my jealousy with little intrigues that had seemed great at the time, and apparently were. I did not wait. I raced to confront him at his apartments and caught him in a position with the bitch that even the most skilful of lies could not extricate him from. She had the effrontery to seize a knife and threaten me with it. I kicked and punched the sin out of her and sent her fleeing, and the knife clattered to the floor. I saw it, and I saw him, too speechless with shame even to lie. I would have accepted anything except his beaten-dog shame!’ Maria’s teeth flashed between brilliant, grimacing lips. It was as if the knife had been set there by some greater hand than mine.’
Even now Maria was rigid, coiled, as if responding to the grip of that great hand. ‘I seized the knife and, in my fury, plunged it into his astonished breast. I still see his eyes. . . . And the feeling … the feeling of entering him with that knife was as it had been when he had first entered me and stabbed me with love.’ Her eyes glowed but her cadence faltered. ‘Ever . . . ever since then . . . love and hate have been . . . inseparable in my . . . soul.’
Haraldr stared at the statue for a moment; its whimsical stone features seemed for a moment sad, as if stone, like flesh, were also a prison. He looked at Maria, still standing, her arms clutched as if her stomach ached, her eyes feverish with pain. He reached out and extricated one of her hands and pulled her down beside him. ‘I understand your pain,’ he told her as he clutched her cold, stiff hand. ‘I tried to become a man too soon, as I think you tried to become a woman too soon. I cannot be as honest as you and tell you everything that happened. But there was a battle, and everything I knew and loved was taken from me that day. Even my pride and honour. It was as if fate stripped me and broke me and ground me into the offal of my own fear. I remained screaming, unable to move, awake in that nightmare for many years. Because of the love of an old man who is dead now, and the help of the gods, I no longer live in that nightmare. But my soul still sears with the shame and agony of that day. I am marked by it for ever.’
Maria’s grip was fierce, astonishingly powerful. ‘I am not ashamed of what I did. But I am still angry. It is the anger that reduces me, because I have let loose its misguided arrows all my life.’
Haraldr could say nothing. She had bared her breast to him and indeed had no reason for shame; there was nothing in her tale that did not make him think more of her. He felt shame because the lie born at Stiklestad was still with him, and the anger he should proclaim to the world was still hidden. But he could not answer her truth with one of his own. He thought again of the ambivalent fate that had whispered to him high above the Hippodrome, and heard again its caution. Was this new truth of hers merely another mask for her soul? Or was her soul merely a mask for some devious fate? He did not know. And so all he could do was hold her desperate hand and listen to the hot wind rise and rattle among the sycamore leaves.
‘The Magister and Strategus of Armenikoi, Constantine Tztezes, paid a common prostitute to costume herself as the whore of Babylon, go about her business with a young man while he watched, and then . . .’ Michael Kalaphates let the letter drop onto the stack, a look of profound disgust added to the weariness that creased his handsome young face. ‘You don’t want to hear the rest, Uncle. Suffice to say that when the young man had finished with this ersatz Whore of Revelations, Tztezes proceeded to enact the rulers of biblical notoriety who had “drunk deep of her fornication”.’ Michael narrowed his eyes. ‘And this, Uncle, is the kind of narrow-minded prig who calls a sportsman like myself an apostate to Satan.’